Haryana government restores to panchayat land tworth Rs.1 bn

Gurgaon (Haryana), March 26 (IANS) Nearly 10 acres of prime commercial land worth nearly Rs.1 billion ($25 million) in the millennium city here has been saved possibly from falling into the hands of land mafia following the intervention of the district administration. The land has been restored to the panchayat. A state government spokesman said here Wednesday that R.K. Mishra and his wife of New Delhi’s Vasant Vihar sold 10 acres of prime ‘panchayat’ (village council) land in village Bajghera of Gurgaon to the Sri Shankar Siksha Yatan Trust in May 2001.

This was done with the condition that an educational institution would be set up on this land within two years and the land would not be sold to anyone.

However, the trust did not set up any educational institution on this land and the village panchayat filed a petition with the district collector December 2005 seeking return of the land.

The trust sold the land off to another resident of the village in March last year. The panchayat complained to the district collector again.

In his order, District Collector Rakesh Gupta ordered the trust and the buyer to vacate the land and declared the panchayat as the owner.

Gurgaon is a bustling suburb of the national capital and has seen unprecedented economic boom in the last few years.

This is not the first instance of the Gurgaon district administration intervening in saving costly land from falling possibly into the hands of land mafia.

In January this year, a 19-acre piece of land worth several millions of rupees in village Badshahpur was handed over to the panchayat after administration got it vacated from a big construction company. Another 2.5 acres of land was also saved earlier in the same village from the land mafia.